Hue

1st May 2010 Today was our last day in Hue before our five day motorbike tour into the mountains tomorrow, so we decided to take it easy, especially because the humidity was very high. We started the day by walking around the Citadel, but due to the high humidity this was a very hot undertaking. We passed an interestingly named clothes shop before heading back towards the flag tower where we found a display of Reunification hardware which we hadn’t seen the other day. The Imperial Enclosure which we had visited two days ago was heaving with Vietnamese and there were people everywhere so we soon headed back to the hotel for some peace and quiet and lovely air conditioning. ...

30th April 2010 Reunification Day is a public holiday in Vietnam that marks the occasion the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops captured Saigon on April 30, 1975. This signalled the end of the Vietnam War and was the start of the transition period toward reunification, which occurred on July 2, 1976. Also, tomorrow, 1st May is Labour Day so the Vietnamese have a rare long weekend. Consequently, today the city and its sights were really busy with Vietnamese tourists. ...

29th April 2010 Our first job today was to contact Hue Riders. These are the local version of the Easy Riders we used in Dalat a few weeks ago to do a day tour into the countryside. This time we’re keen to travel down the coast but this time going over the Hai Van pass that we came under in the tunnel yesterday. Viewers of Top Gear may recall this pass from the Top Gear in Vietnam episode they did a couple of years ago. We were also interested in continuing our journey by bike on down to Nha Trang, but we didn’t really know how long it would take or what our options are. A quick phone call to a helpful Australian lady resulted in a Hue Rider arriving at our hotel some ten minutes later. ...

28th April 2010 We had a bus booked to Hue this afternoon, but that didn’t leave until 1pm, so we had a fairly quiet morning, a lot of which was packing our bags up ready to move on. This was a bit like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole - what with the coats we bought in Sapa, and new clothes we’ve had made in Hoi An, our bags are becoming rather stretched to capacity. It looks like we might have to post some more stuff home once we get back to Saigon. ...